


Tell Me That I Won't Feel a Thing

by detritius



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Blood, Dissection, Gen, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Touching, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, depending on how you define ship might be a ship thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 19:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4404059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detritius/pseuds/detritius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set pre-series, Spirit both knows and doesn't know what his partner's been doing to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me That I Won't Feel a Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a break from the Hannibal fandom this week (since they changed the time slot, I haven't even found a good time to watch the new episode yet, mea culpa) so I wrote this. Which may just be mutated Hannigram anyway, I don't even know where my head's at right now.
> 
> Serious liberties may be taken with canon, I can't be sure because I'm only halfway through Soul Eater and I know basically nothing about Soul Eater Not. I don't know how old anyone is meant to be in this fic. I'll be honest, I don't even know why I wrote it. There were feelings, and a thing happened. I don't know what else to tell you.
> 
> Title taken from "Give Me Novocain" by Green Day.

Spirit's always been a heavy sleeper, even before his days at the Academy. It's been something of a mixed bag, even with his previous roommates. Living with an assortment of rowdy, flat broke guys, he found himself on the receiving end of more than a couple pranks, but at least no matter what was going on around him, he always got a full night's rest. 

Stein, though, is a morning person, on top of his other eccentricities, and dawn'll see him banging around in the kitchenette or hunched up over a book. Spirit's only encountered him that way at the end of a few particularly long nights, so mostly, he has no way of knowing what Stein does with himself in the early hours. Mostly, he prefers not to know. He chooses not to dwell on the weird smells and troubling fumes he sometimes wakes up to, and he won't try to rouse himself unless he hears screaming. As long as Stein isn't hurting anyone, it's none of Spirit's business. Except when Stein decides to drag him into it.

This time, it starts when he tries to rub the sleep from his eyes and can't, his hands in padded leather cuffs down by his sides. From the uncomfortable band of pressure when he pulls in a breath, he guesses the strap around his chest is fastened too, and he groans in irritation.

Stein's voice, low and placid. "Oh good. You're awake."

Spirit huffs and keeps his eyes firmly shut, just to spite him. His barely-conscious mind is scrambling, stretching out his kinesthetic sense in search of something wrong. He's lying on his back, so his spine and the neural net at the base of his skull are safe beneath the weight of his body. His face feels normal enough, but that's part of the tacit agreement between them. Stein isn't allowed to tamper with Spirit's face. Restraints press snugly to the oft-picked sutures over his ribs, where Stein'll open him when he wants to examine the function of his lungs or just watch his heart beating. Something different, then. His mental inventory stops abruptly around his navel. "...can't feel my legs."

"Your legs are fine," Stein says, from somewhere down between them. "I've given you an epidural. No sedative, though. I'll need to monitor your responses." He sounds vague and distracted, which is a good sign, and Spirit can tell by the quality of his voice that he has an unlit cigarette between his back teeth. Nothing out of the ordinary, then. Barely suppressed glee and he'd worry. "Anyway, I didn't want to make you late for class. I think I'll have to wheel you in today, but you should be perfectly aware, so you'll have no excuse if you don't learn anything."

Spirit thinks _sorry I can't get anything done around here, but the partner you assigned me is crazy_ is a pretty good catch-all excuse, but he doesn't say anything. If he strains the muscles of his neck, he can see down the length of his body, past scarred and sewn up skin to to where Stein's gloved hands are dipping in and out of him. He doesn't want to see, really, but he can't trust Stein to know if he'll really be okay. Partway down his abdomen, around where the feeling stops, the dull glint of a clamp holding him open. An incision no more than three inches long, and Spirit sighs and lets his head fall back. Stein was probably just curious about something he found in some medical book and wanted to see it for himself. 

Stein glances up at him, his spectacles flashing, obscuring the expression in his eyes. "Do you want to watch? I can get a mirror for you."

"I'd rather not," Spirit says, and leaves it at that. He isn't sure if he should take it as a taunt or as a genuine offer, because in his position, he's fairly sure Stein _would_ want to watch. Maybe, in his twisted way, Stein's hoping Spirit will get something out of this, too. But then, Stein doesn't exactly know that Spirit's taken to pretending he's unaware that any of this happening.

He tried to face up to it at first -- well, no, not at first. For awhile, he really didn't know what was going on. He saw the scars but thought he got them somehow during training, even when he couldn't remember getting hit. He had the creeping sense that something was wrong, but who could he confide in? Every weapon has scars. Why should he get to keep his skin clear and lily-white? Did he think he was better than the rest of them? He half convinced himself he was being paranoid and vain. Then he woke up one morning with Stein wrist-deep in his chest cavity. 

He could've screamed. Maybe he should have, but he was struck silent. He was trying to put the pieces together and couldn't make sense of the picture they made. It didn't seem like something that could really be happening. Stein saw he was awake and asked how he was feeling, and how the hell was he supposed to answer that? It was just too surreal. Spirit can't remember what he said. He thinks he might have laughed.

He didn't know what to do after that, or even how to feel. Stein finished with him, sewed him up, and they went to class like nothing had happened. It seemed like the world they'd been living in before. But Spirit couldn't look at anyone, all those people who thought he was such a skilled weapon, so powerful. What would they say if they knew, if they could have seen him on his back, helpless? What would they think of him now?

Of course he didn't tell anyone. Even if he could've faced the shame of it, he couldn't find the words. He didn't think they would believe him. Hell, he barely believed it himself. Even when it happened again and again and again. And then, the more it happened, as the initial shock faded down, the more he wondered if he even had the right to be upset. Stein never hurt him any worse than he had to, and Spirit understood that he needed to do it. It was a compulsion, the drive to dissect and take things apart, and dead specimens could only do so much for him. Lord Death knew what Stein was when he took him in, and knew without a purpose, he'd be worse. He'd asked Spirit to keep an eye on him, keep him under control. Was this what Lord Death meant? In a fight, a weapon's job is to give himself fully to his meister, even knowing he could get hurt, being willing to sacrifice his body if he had to. Was this so different? Why did he have to keep resisting? What kind of partner was he if he couldn't give his meister what he needed?

He tried to give himself over to it, but there were unexpected consequences.

There were days when he couldn't find the strength to fight and even in his scythe form, he felt fragile, and there were days when he came close to really hurting his sparring partners because in Stein's hands, wielded by him, the line between them blurred and Stein's madness overtook him. In the field, when he wasn't cringing away from every blow, he was wild and laughing and reckless, none of his calculated skill from before, only jittery manic energy. After hours, he drank and slept around and passed out and that was how he slept at night. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. His body wasn't _his_ anymore. His grades slipped, then plummeted. He started to get hurt a lot, and couldn't bring himself to care. The nights he spent in the dispensary were the easiest and the best. After awhile, the pain didn't matter. After awhile, he stopped feeling much of anything. And he could have settled into numbness, if it wasn't for the moments when he suddenly wasn't and his world became a screaming hell. Without warning, having anyone look at him would become unbearable, and being touched was worse. He couldn't be around people, convinced that they would hurt him, convinced all he was good for was being hurt, afraid the pain would stop and he'd be worthless. The need to debase himself would make him desperate, and he'd go from dead-eyed to shaking in a matter of seconds.

Like that, he wasn't much use to either of them. On more than one occasion, he almost got them killed, and when he felt relief in the seconds before a brutal blow connected, he knew this had to stop. He couldn't feel helpless and out of control and still do the job. Thinking about it was hurting both of them, so he had to stop thinking about it.

He let it sink out of sight, and pushed it down and pushed it down until it was all but gone. He hardly thinks about it anymore except when it's happening, and even then, he knows it has to end. They don't talk about it. These moments between them are disconnected from everything else in his life, as unreal to him as the nightmares he sometimes has. And it's so much easier. He isn't a victim of someone who's supposed to be his partner or a participant in his own vivisection. He won't be here at all for long, in this space between his dreams and the reality he can accept. Soon he'll wake up, and function as though there's nothing going on. He's gotten to the point where sometimes, he even believes it himself. But it's easier if he doesn't look. He doesn't need the images clattering around in his head. He already knows more than he wants to from the blood on Stein's hands and the soft, wet sounds of him rummaging around in his insides.

There's a furrow between Stein's brows, and he reaches up to adjust his glasses, leaving a red smear across the nosepiece. "I've never understood your lack of intellectual curiosity."

Just that is too much for Spirit, and he closes his eyes again. "Do you have to lecture me while you're doing this?"

"No," Stein says, and lapses into silence.

Spirit so prefers it when he's quiet. It makes it that much easier for him to drift away. Maybe he'll even fall asleep again, and when he wakes up, there'll be nothing wrong in his life at all.


End file.
